Here Be Dragons
by Ryojin2
Summary: A defective light at an intersection, a drug deal gone wrong, a limping friend, and a very bored consulting detective.
1. Chapter 1

_Written from John Watson's pov. Set during the second season._

 **Here be dragons**

"Boring! Boooorrring! BORING!"

After ten days of monastic silence and melancholic violin, Sherlock's voice finally burst in our apartment of 221B Baker Street.

Ten days that I was on the lookout for a sign, an expression, anything that would indicate an emersion from his catharsis, and he catches me off guard! My bloody coffee spilled on my laptop, I can now assert with confidence that Sherlock Holmes is by all standards and beyond the most extraordinary specimen of Asperger syndrome.

"Ouch! I think I twisted my calf..." he whines as I pick up a napkin in a desperate attempt to save me four hundred pounds.

"One can't twist one's calf, Sherlock. Perhaps you should take a walk outside. Surely your legs would appreciate moving a greater length than the two meters between the chimney and the couch."

"Two meters seventy-six centimeters precisely between the chimney, the couch, and the kitchen table. This perfect triangle helps me focus. It helps you too, even if your ordinary brain cannot realise it. Pure geometric shapes elevate everybody's mind no matter how low they are."

"Says what scientific study?"

"Says me. For instance-"

"I believe you, Sherlock. Tell me on what have you been focusing those last ten days, four hours, twenty-three minutes and... twelve seconds?"

"The depth of my boredom! And yours."

"Mine?!"

"Yes. Isn't that obvious?"

"That's it!" say I, leaping from my chair. "We're going out."

"No, we're not."

"Yes, we are. Doctor's order."

"You dare use medical authority on me?"

"And my military one along. Now grab your coat before I make you do push-ups! Go! Go! Move now, soldier!" say I, pushing him toward the door.

"Soldier?! Me? A simple soldier? Wait! I'm still in my pyjamas!"

"Your coat will cover."

If Sherlock keeps on whining all his way down the stairs, he stops dead in his tracks once on the sidewalk, not liking one-bit attracting attention on himself. It is quite a sunny and surprisingly warm morning for the season. The cherry tree across the street is already showing a bit of white on its swelling buds, and there is this feeling of lightness hanging in the air, the relaxed smiles on people's face that show an anticipation of summer and pleasant times to come. Gently, I push my pale friend on the right, and together we head toward the park three blocks down on Baker Street. I count the steps of silence, expecting to hear from him before twenty. It will be twenty-one. I'm definitively getting better at predicting his reactions.

"I'm too hot in my coat."

"Take it off, then," say I, removing my own jacket.

"Surely you find your pragmatism very amusing right now but let me tell you that I do not."

Making an obvious effort to keep the volume of his voice down, all too aware that his get-up indeed attracts unwanted, detestable attention, Sherlock lifts the collar of his coat as if the fiercest of all the north winds was blowing right on his neck, proudly straightens his back, and starts walking like a man with a goal, his childish, contradictory mind shining brighter than the sun on his back. Damn me! I hope I will not find him with a heat stroke this evening. But then, he is way too pale and thin. His body needs exercise and a shipload of vitamin D.

"Let's cross the street," say I, catching sight of a pause in the traffic. "Why-"

"If you're wondering why there are so many cars in our street today it is due to a weird road accident between a city transit bus and a tourist one this morning at eight-thirty-six."

"Casua-"

"Two deaths at Saint Peter's morgue, six in intensive care in St Bart's hospital, forty-two wounded, two-thirds of them should receive a discharge in the coming hours while the rest will be kept overnight for observation."

"Are you a doctor now?"

"I could be if I found any interest in the profession. Interest that you seem to lack yourself lately or you would not…"

A silhouette on the sidewalk catches my eyes and suddenly, Sherlock's voice drowns in the stream of noises coming from the city. Vaguely, I am conscious that my heart rate just jumped from one hundred to two-hundred-and-fifty beats per second. It is not possible… He's looking at me. He's looking straight at me.

"John? I did not want to insult you. I should apologise."

"No…"

My voice comes out as a whisper. I am aware of that. And it is because it's just not possible. Not possible. It cannot be him, looking at me from the sidewalk. I should check with an ophthalmologist or my therapist. Yes, my therapist. What's her name already? Perhaps I should have kept her professional card. Why was I so sure I would not need her services anymore? That makes no sense. No more sense than _him_ … here… standing in… front of… _me_? No! We got him in the end. I got him. I'm the one who shot him. But I couldn't check his vitals… no time for that. Extraction… the chopper… Major Sholto dragging me, carrying me out of the building and in the street before I could check. You had passed out, remember? I remember... I remember that I had put a damn bullet in the bastard's throat. No way he could have survived. No. No way. Drowned in his own blood in less than five minutes, no hospital, no ambulance. No.

"John?! Step on the sidewalk now! That's an order, soldier!

"Soldier's not my rank, major…" I whisper to Sholto's ghost, wondering why he sounds like my friend Sherlock, barking orders above all the honks, the engines, the rifles spitting deadly bullets, the explosions and the cries… _What the hell is my friend doing in Afgh… wait a sec._ I shook my head and rub my eyes. When I open them again, in the crumbling building has disappeared.

 _"_ I'm in London," say I, sending a disbelief look around me. Oh dear God! What is happening to me?

"Yes, you are, but more precisely, you're standing right in the middle of the bus lane!"

Sherlock's hand suddenly grabs my arm and violently drags me forward. With astonishment, I realise that one of the angry honks my mind registered in the background comes from a city bus. The driver is standing up behind the wheel... breaking! With dread, I watch the forty-thousand pounds projectile stopping a good meter past me. Though my mind acknowledges that the impact would have probably been fatal, somehow I don't seem to be able to care. My eyes are going back toward the real threat.

"Where is he?" I mutter, not seeing him anywhere.

"Who?" asks Sherlock again.

The bastard who dug his knife into my thigh to keep me from running ever again. I don't understand. Dead people don't come back to life. I'm a doctor. I know that. But why would my imagination playing me tricks? I never had such a vivid hallucination about him, nightmares tons of them; hallucination in broad daylight? Never! Then the only explanation is that I just saw someone who looked like him. It's not impossible after all.

"Are you okay?"

I raise my eyes to meet Sherlock's worried glance.

"Yes, I'm fine."

I am not in Afghanistan anymore, I am safe I tell myself like a mantra to persuade my heart to calm down and my body to relax.

"Let's go back to the apartment."

"No. We were going to the park and it is exactly where we will go now," I reply, starting to walk again, dragging my looking-for-a-reason-to-escape friend along with me.

"Care to explain what happened?"

"Nothing happened to me."

"Alllll right. I'll go back to silence then."

"Silence's good. Thank you," I say, happy not to hear any tremor in my voice but definitively worried to feel on edge, to the point that I force my eyes to lock on a phone box fifty yards in front of me before commanding my legs to walk.

"John?"

"Yes?"

"The park's this way."

"Okay," I say, my eyes quickly locking on a cherry tree as I swiftly rotate on my heels.

No sniper in London's streets. No sniper on the roofs. Reflection on that car windshield is just the sun. Facing windows are clear.

My leg's hurting.


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh, dear God! You both look so beaten. You two haven't been fighting, have you boys?" asks Mrs. Hudson as we meet her in the middle of the narrow staircase a couple of hours later. Well, perhaps more than just a couple I realise as I push our door open and observe that it is almost as dark in the flat as it was in the poorly lit corridor. Dusk? Already?

"No, Mrs. Hudson, we just walked all our way to Dover and back," answers Sherlock while I collapse on the couch, exhausted, a throbbing pain in my entire left leg. Wet weather coming back.

"Oh my, don't be silly! That would take you days to go there. But what were you doing outside in your pyjamas anyway, Sherlock?"

"Walking. I said that already. Now let's see... eighty-two miles to Dover, if we were walking at an average pace of three miles per hour, which by the way we weren't for more than five minutes for a pretty obvious reason that only escapes John, it would have taken us at best twenty days and ten hours for the round trip. Is supper ready? I'm starving."

"Not your housekeeper, dear."

"And bring John some Ibuprofen with his tea. Or better, morphine."

"Morphine? Why? Is your leg annoying you again, dear?"

"Not at all. If you'll excuse me, I'm more tired than hungry tonight," say I, wishing to avoid Mrs. Hudson's comments about how the weather affects her hip and not particularly fond of Sherlock's talent to subject both my emotional and physical states to a surgical operation without anaesthesia either.

Unfortunately, my escape is not quick enough. I'm barely on my feet when Sherlock's phone emits the familiar beep of a text message coming in, followed by an outburst of true and shameless joy:

"YES! At LAST! John! Let's go for a walk."

"I've had enough of that for today. So if you don't mind, I'll let you-"

"Detective's orders! That's only fair, mind you? And anyway, you won't sleep well tonight so you're better spare yourself the trouble of trying and come with me instead to keep your wandering mind occupied," says Sherlock with a smile and a brightness in his eyes that I know all too well. The brightness Donovan calls his psychopath gleam not without reason. Personally, I prefer to stick to the image of a panther licking his chops in front of new fresh tracks. Fresh, bloody, and very meaty tracks, that I cannot deny their appeal on me at this exact instant, for everything Sherlock said about my chances of finding rest tonight were gravely understated.

"Mrs Hudson's been keeping your cane for her old age. It's in the cupboard under the stairs," adds he, leaping out in the corridor, leaving me like Pavlov's dog, drooling over the bell of crime.

"Take this before you go," says our landlady, a glass of water in one hand and two white pills in the other.

"I'm fine," say I, declining the medication as I rush after Sherlock before he dives in a cab.

"Oh, John! The clinic called. They need you again for a few months starting tomorrow. I said yes for you!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Hudson," I reply as I reach the bottom of the stairs. Hesitant, I cast a glance at the cupboard.

"JOHN!"

Sherlock's call prompts me to make a decision. Muttering a curse, I walk out into the night without any help. Damn my bloody leg!

The corner of Elm street and Saint Georges might have been nice one day, but it was probably before the invention of writing for no historical book ever recorded anything pleasant about this borough. Nowadays, travel guides even warn their readers to avoid it at all costs. Tonight makes no exception.

The cabbie sends me an uncomfortable glance as I pay the fare and without bothering to enquire if we'll need a ride back, hastily drives away toward safer grounds. I cannot blame him. The searchlight from one of the two police cars parked a bit further down the alley casts ominous shadows around the silhouettes of Lestrade's team in the fog.

"Dark, foggy and damp. As welcoming as a cemetery," mutters Sherlock with a smile. "In short, a perfect place to die, don't you think, John?"

"A drug deal gone wrong, that's our guess," announces Lestrade as he walks up the alley to greet us.

"But something's wrong," mutters Sherlock, "or you would not have called me for help."

"Well… I can't deny there's a weird feeling coming out of the scene with the fog and all that, but no. I called you because Anderson's on vacation and I only have a useless rookie with me for the next week."

Lestrade sends a quick glance on his right side toward the young forensic intern. The poor bloke is bent in two in a corner, heaving deeply. Wow! He's swaying! Quickly, I leave Sherlock with Lestrade to examine the corpse and head toward Anderson's intern. What's his name already? I met him two weeks ago at the morgue and the kid seemed more than able to cope with the unpleasantness of the duty. Though motivated by the prospect of me earning money to pay the rent, Mrs. Hudson was wise to answer yes for me. Working at the clinic will do me some good, especially after today. Keeping my mind preoccupied with someone else's problems is definitively better than to allow it space and time to freely roam my memories.

"Hey, mate. How are you doing?" I ask him as he leans against the wall, shaking.

"I'm really sorry, sir. I don't know what happens to me… I… I was just having dinner when they called me in, at a pub, with friends."

"Don't worry about it. How are you feeling right now?"

From the corner of the eye, I watch Sherlock crouching over the body and beginning a quick but thorough examination, his nose barely half-an-inch from the corpse, probably sniffing for any smells that could give his murderer away.

"My head, my guts hurt... feeling dizzy too."

"All right. I want you to sit down for a minute, okay?" say I, grabbing his wrist to estimate his heart rate as I guide him to the ground. Fast. Around one-hundred-and-twenty.

"Doctor Watson? Would you come over here, please?"

"A second," I shout to Lestrade before focusing my attention back on the distressed young intern and look at his face. With the darkness, it's difficult to say. A bit clammy. Too much booze perhaps. Shame to show up a little tipsy and underperform right under the boss's nose could cause an anxiety attack.

"John?"

"Coming!" I cry to Sherlock, "Err... It's Eddie right? Okay, Eddie. Try to take slow, deep breaths and relax for a couple of minutes. Don't move from here. I'll come back to check on you. Deal?"

"Deal." The young man replies weakly.

Not particularly worried about his case, I stand up to join the group of detectives, official and consulting.

"A snake coiled around a dagger..." I hear Sherlock mutter.

My breath suddenly shortens.

"This insignia on his jacket says Royal Artillerie, Fourth Regiment," replies Lestrade.

"This tattoo tells he was, in fact, part of an SAS unit," Sherlock repeats, standing up and stepping aside to free my view of the body. "The victim is a white male, twenty-six or twenty-seven year old, military. The absence of sun tan, and the growth of hair, he's been on active duty at least two years ago in Afghanistan, wounded in action and treated for PTSD but eventually gave up his treatment and ended up on street, did drugs, so maybe two or three years younger, twenty-three or twenty-four. He's been stabbed in the left thigh but didn't die of blood loss. Autopsy will confirm that the victim was high on-

"Opium…" I whisper, wishing for my cane to support me. _Pure opium. Dear god! Matthews was only twenty-three._

At once, all glances turn toward me.

"Do you know him, John?" Sherlock asks as I force myself to avert my gaze from the young face at my feet while my heart rate is skyrocketing.

 _Stabbed in the thigh. Not a drug deal gone wrong. An execution. And a message. For me._

Do I reveal his identity? If I don't, Sherlock will learn it from his brother. Or not. Mycroft Holmes does not hit me like the kind of man who would confide top secret documents to his brother just because this latter would have asked for it.

"No," I lie, training kicking in, "but O.D.s are not uncommon amongst veterans suffering from PTSD. Especially those on street because of lack of psychological or financial support."

"So you knew him? To know that he had PTSD, you knew him," Donovan extrapolates, staring at me suspiciously.

"Not big a leap to deduce that a young veteran living on the street suffered from PTSD. John has PTSD too. He usually hides it in his cane. And right now he's thinking that had not been for his sister, it could very well have been him lying there. So yes, in a twisted, human kind of way, John knows the victim," says Sherlock, disconcerting me a little. What does he know exactly? What has his superior mind already deduced?

"You've got a sister? How come you never speak of her?"

"You're not her type, Lestrade," says Sherlock as my thoughts are bluntly thrown in the pinball machine of my psyche.

Despite our disagreements, Harry cares for me. What with everything the psychologists were telling her about my case, that my complete denial, visceral inability to acknowledge that something happened to me in Afghanistan, put me at risk of committing suicide. No amount of reassuring words could alleviate her fright to see me accomplish the irredeemable act. That's why she had given me her phone. So, like she feared, if in the middle of the night I could not find a way out of my nightmares, I would pick up the phone instead of the gun.

A wave of sadness and guilt seizes me at that memory. No doubt Harry had her problem with booze before I come back from Afghanistan, but I certainly added up another good reason to fetch the bottle. Speaking of drinking, the young intern is still in the same spot, vomiting again. His sight efficiently pushes my melancholy away. Someone needs me; someone alive. And seeing him bent in two out of pain tells me that what afflicts him is something else than inebriation. Crime scene or not, he would have been sick anyway. Good for him and his career.

"Don't fire your intern just yet, Lestrade. He's obviously got a case of food poisoning," say I, walking away from the scene to check on my patient. He's barely younger than Matthews... Wet asphalt under my soles, no dirt.

 _Goddammit!_

Why is keeping my feet anchored in the present so incredibly hard tonight? You know why, John. Because you can't run away. None of us can... I should not have lost track of them. How can I warn them now? At least Sholto's still in Afghanistan, I think... And how am I supposed to keep this a secret? Better, how am I supposed to keep Sherlock Holmes from finding out? Easy enough. You shut up. You shut up at all his questions. As if it has any chance to fool him! The Greatest Consulting Detective of all times!

"Did you hurt your leg again, Dr. Watson?" asks Donovan as I pass by her.

Oh, dear God! I'm in trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

A week since Matthews's murder.

A week without daylight hallucination. That's a good thing.

A week without much sleep. Less good.

A week of salary. I'll certainly take that.

A week at Sarah's bedside while she laboriously recovers from the bus crash... Guilt.

Guilt because the real reason I've been holding fourteen to sixteen hours between patients and administrative duty is to avoid Sherlock Holmes. How long can this situation last?

"Hi!"

My guts twist upon hearing Sherlock's voice.

"Is she gonna wake up?"

"Oh, she did. This morning. Briefly," I reply, whispering.

"Any sequela?"

"Too soon to say."

A weird silence falls on the bleak hospital room as Sherlock sits down across the bed, staring at me, quickly shifting his eyes to Sarah's sleeping body when I challenge his glance. Like an addict in front of his dope, he burns to tell me something but knows that the place is not appropriate and restrains himself. This cannot be good.

"Did you have dinner already?" ask I, offering him what he came for, a chance to talk to me, but on my own terms and grounds.

"I've reserved us a table at that pizzeria across the street. You don't ask me how I got pass the nurses's desk?"

I can't help but chuckle in front of my idiocy to consider that I could think ahead of him. "Remind me never to play chess with you," I whisper as I stand up to give Sarah's forehead a gentle kiss before turning to pick up my jacket on the other, unoccupied bed.

"Incredible how fast a Scotland Yard's badge opens doors," says Sherlock as he joins me a couple of seconds later in the corridor. "You know how to play chess?"

"Lestrade knows about this?"

"I guess by tomorrow morning he'll have realised. Let's take the elevator."

"My leg's fine."

"Mine aren't, and it's your fault. Elevator it is."

"So you're a pickpocket too."

"I am a man of many talents, John. Surely you'll have noticed by now," says he with an enigmatic smile before walking into the elevator.

"You pressed the wrong button," I wince, raising my arm to press on the lobby's.

"Nope. Our table will be ready in forty-five minutes. More than enough time to examine a new body."

"What new body?" say I, my heart skipping a beat.

"That's a very good question. A very good question indeed," says he, staring at the electronic board showing the levels.

Here comes Sherlock's fast and furious train. The one you realise too late that you already hopped in it, and that the trip's been planned down to the last dot for you. The elevator's bell chimes and the door opens on the long, white corridor of the Mortuary Station. A dreadful feeling in the guts, I follow him to autopsy room three and enter just as he switches the lights on.

"Forty-seven-year-old man. Same military background, same m.o., same killer."

 _Johnson._

My body painfully tenses as I watch with horror and inexpressible disgust the face of my old comrade, Sherlock's analytical gaze on me. Johnson was the one who persuaded me to join the unit. That man was not only a strength of nature, he was trained in hand-to-hand combat. Impossible that he would have let himself killed without putting up a fierce fight. And yet, the lack of bruise on his arms, hands or legs seems to indicate that he did not strike back... My gaze, stopping on the stab wound, forces me to take a deep breath.

"John? What happened to you in Afghanistan?"

"Nothing happened to me," I whisper, turning my eyes away from the corpse of my old mate.

"Com'on, John! Do I really need to ask Mycroft what he knows about a killer on the hunt for soldiers who all happened to serve in the same SAS unit? A killer you saw the morning of the first murder?"

"Yeah… you do that. You talk to your brother," I say, trying not to buckle under the weight of this new shock.

Before I collapse on the ground, I command my shaky legs to head toward the door and storm out of the mortuary, in dire need of fresh air. It is not long before I hear Sherlock's feet behind me.

"I was wrong," says he as I push the stairwell door open.

Any other day, under any other circumstances, such a statement from Sherlock should have made me stop dead in my tracks, both eyebrows raised in confusion and surprise in front of this out of the ordinary admission. Then, the three words: _"wrong about what?"_ should have sprung out of my mouth without warning.

But not tonight.

Tonight, I climb the three flights of stairs without a look back, pushes the door giving on the deserted, back street that only ambulances going to the morgue usually uses, and walk away on the wet pavement toward King Edward street. It is not long before my heart starts pumping blood at full speed through my veins, and it's not entirely due to physical effort or the emotional strain of the last week either.

"There's a presence behind us," whispers Sherlock.

"I know," say I, ready to draw my gun.

 _Where's the traffic when you need it?_

I've barely entertained this thought that a welcomed black shape appears at the corner.

"TAXI!"

A couple of seconds later, I push my friend inside the passenger compartment and dive in, closing the door quickly behind me.

"Where are we going, sirs?"

"Two-two-one B Baker street," replies Sherlock.

"Make a detour by the Mall."

"At that hour it is not necessary," says the cabbie, "there's no traffic at all on the five-o-one."

"Doesn't matter. Make that detour, please," say I, now feeling Sherlock's sparkling gaze on me, his over-stimulated curiosity now more excited than an atom of plutonium in a nuclear plant core.

 _Stay silent_ , I say to myself. Not the first I've been probed on the subject anyway.

By the time we arrive at Baker Street forty minutes later, I am confident that no car has been following us. And when Sherlock opens the door, I cannot be thankful enough for hearing the telly. Mrs. Hudson will not bother us tonight. A good thing for tea is not exactly the beverage I need right now and I might be tempted to ask for something stronger even if I swore to myself never to drink alcohol in a stressing situation, never to soothe my nerves. Still, I need to shake off the fear so I can think straight. Someone with knowledge of my past is out, on the path of vengeance. No choice but to call Mycroft Holmes on this one. If I had done this the first night, Johnson would - _might_ \- still be-

"John?"

Sherlock's hand stops me from climbing the stairs.

"Something's wrong," he mutters, going to Mrs. Hudson's flat.

"Please, don't bother her when she's-"

"The sound of the telly is way too loud. She's old, but not deaf, John. And her door is slightly open... Do you have it?"

"What? Do I have what?"

"Your gun."

Although feeling annoyed that he knows that detail despite my care at the hospital to pick up my jacket without showing what lay beneath, I nod.

"Yes."

"Good. Take it out. We've got some company, the unwanted kind of one."

Picking up an umbrella, Sherlock gently pushes open our landlady's door with his foot while I crouch down on the other side to get a look in. _Clear_. With my left hand, I signal to Sherlock that I'll go in first and cover his entry. The clueless look on his face informs me he did not understand a word.

Sighing deeply, I push him away from the door and back to the stairs.

"You let me handle this," I whisper to him before putting a finger on my lips to ask for silence.

I can't have him going in the flat anyway, untrained, especially if he's right. A part of me dreads what I'll discover inside Mrs. Hudson's quarters. I check one more time that my line of vision is free. Then, with an agility that I almost forgot I possessed, I silently throw myself on the ground, roll and crouched up behind the corner of the couch, my aim straight at the threat in the living-room. Sitting. In the armchair.

"AAAAAHHHHHH!" screams Mrs. Hudson with a high pitch voice as she jumps to her feet, her telly tray flying to the ceiling. "John Watson! By all saints! What do you think you're doing? Pointing a gun at an old lady!"

If my heart starts beating again of deep relief to see her safe and sound, shame to have scared her begins to rise.

"Mrs. Hudson? Would you be kind enough to prepare us some tea? You can add a little extra in John's cup if you see what I mean."

At once, anger replaces both relief and shame when I catch Sherlock's gleaming eyes. He trapped me! The bloody bastard trapped me!

"Oh dear, I see what you mean," replies Mrs. Hudson. "I'll need one myself to stop me from shaking. You are a very, very scary doctor, you know that, John Watson!"

"Yes. A very, very scary army doctor," says Sherlock, nodding like a marionette.

"How can you sneak up on people so silently? Like a… like a…"

"Like a snake, Mrs. Hudson."

"Yes, Sherlock. A snake!"

 _He knows!_ I tell myself, eyes wide in disbelief. The snake coiling around a dagger was our unit tattoo.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to scare you, Mrs. Hudson. I thought there was a…"

"Thief."

"Yes, _Sherlock_. An indiscreet, too curious thief who puts his bloody nose where it doesn't belong!"

"So you thought I was in danger? That's so brave of you, young man! I think then that I should be grateful to have such a valiant soldier to protect me in case of attack."

Great. Now even Mrs. Hudson thinks about me as a soldier before a doctor. Thank god she said valiant and not dangerous.

"My… why on earth would someone attack our building, isn't that right John?"

"Oh, one never knows these days, dear."

"I'm sorry. It's late and I had a bit of a difficult day. No need for tea, Mrs. Hudson. Good night to both."

On that, I walk out of her flat and climb the two flights of stairs to my bedroom with the firm intention to crash on my bed. My door is barely closed that my phone emits the familiar beep of a text coming in. Realising that I'm still holding my gun, I put it on the desk before taking the message.

 _35427 E. Hartson st. 22:00. MH._

A knock startles me.

"John?!"

"I'm sleeping!" say I, not moving.

"No, you're not," Sherlocks replies. "Mycroft's limousine just stopped in front of the building."

"What?"

A second beep from my phone.

 _Bring SH. With you. MH._


	4. Chapter 4

_Thank you for the reviews :) it is very much appreciated!_

* * *

"You planned this, did you? Like in Baskerville? You did it again!" say I as I dive into Mycroft's limousine.

Sitting at the back, Anthea lifts her head from her mobile phone to send me one of her feline glances.

"Hi!" say I, not hoping for much consideration from her… magnetism… and as expected, she barely acknowledges my presence that her sparkling eyes focus on the screen of her phone again. What would I give to be a mere piece of technology in her hands!

"You know me, John. There's nothing like an interesting mystery to stimulate my mind," says Sherlock as he sits down next to me, forcing me to get closer to Mycroft's assistant for lack of a better understanding of her role. Not that I complain. Could she be his bodyguard?

"And the return of your limp certainly qualifies like one. John?"

"What?" I ask, realising that Sherlock is talking to me.

I must be more tired than I thought to let my attention wander to the… Dangerous woman would fit too for Anthea, wouldn't it? Danger's breathing out all of her pores. Delicate, soft pores… Nice perfume she's wearing. A bit soft. A jasmine touch maybe?

"Want to know what I learned from your little but, quite impressive demonstration?" ask Sherlock, dragging me back to a more mundane reality. Sad, cold reality.

Killing two birds with one stone, I shake my head both out of disappointment and to answer the fastest mind sitting next to me that I do not wish him to dig further, even though somehow, a part of me is curious to know how close to home his deductions hit.

"Com'on, John, everything is so much clearer now. But let's start from the beginning and our first case."

 _As if I had a word to say anyway… Take a deep breath, John_ , I say to myself, setting my eyes on the quiet urban landscape as the limousine drives up the five-o-one access ramp.

"A kill shot, through a window, at night, fifty meters from me and that awful cabbie, do you remember?"

"How could I forget?"

"The following night, I went back to the dissection classroom from where you fired. You were pretty confident that you would not miss, weren't you? If the wind had deviated the bullet just a little on the right, I'd be dead."

"There was no wind."

"Yes, there was. Just enough to feel it on my face while I was sitting at the back of the ambulance. But you're right. The wind blew from the north and therefore, there was no wind between our two positions."

Sherlock marks a pause to stare at me as if he expects a reaction from me after this singular recollection.

"So what?"

"So what?" Sherlock repeats, smiling like a jubilating carnivore in front of a cornered prey. "Our brains, especially yours with less hard drive capacity than mine, retain only valuable information, John. And believe me or not, I find that difficult to believe that knowing the direction the wind blows is of any importance for a doctor. But then, you always say that you're an army doctor and for a soldier, the wind is a significant parameter. Therefore, you were walking through Bart's corridors not as a doctor, but as a soldier."

"So what? You were in danger, kidnapped by a serial killer! Of course, I was on my guard."

"A doctor who thinks like a soldier and a soldier who thinks like a doctor… or is it a soldier that possess medical knowledge? Both professions are in fact not so distant from one another if you think of it. Both must follow intense training in order to react as fast as possible in a life or death situation. Both must know sets of procedures, protocols to apply to the letter in any given circumstance. Both are confronted with death on a daily basis. Both must display nerves of steel in a stressful work environment. Both must have steady hands. There is no doubt that both professions are looking for the same set of qualities in their candidates."

"You're setting one divergent and critical detail aside."

"Which one?"

"The killing kind of one."

"Ah! The soldier kills, the doctor saves. Boring! Even you, you're not fooling yourself with this nonsense, John. On a battlefield, the doctor saves lives that would have been lost without his quick intervention; in the middle of a car wreck, the doctor sorts the wounded by order of priority, and amongst the most serious ones, who has the best chances to survive and should receive his attention first and foremost, possibly facing soul-wracking dilemmas: the mother or the baby? Which one will you save, which one will you kill then by delaying emergency care? Facing life and death choice, as a doctor, you were trained to make the call and to make it fast. This is the irreconcilable truth of your split identity, John, the reason why you're sitting next to me right now and the reason why your conscience is torturing you at night. You went to war thinking you were a doctor and came back realising you are more of a soldier. And not any soldier, like you proved tonight outside of St Bart's and in Mrs. Hudson's flat. Your little stunt made quite an impression on her. Clearly, you were trained for moving around stealthily. Which makes sense, given your small size."

A difficult knot tightens my throat as I keep my eyes staring straight at the road in front of me. This discussion, I had it with Harry before joining the army, almost word for word.

"Wait a second!" say I, frowning as some of his words take a moment to register in my brains. "What do you mean by « outside of St Bart's » ?"

"The fact that you knew we were being followed less than one minute after we were in the street."

"That was your doing, wasn't it? All part of your plan?!"

"Well... let's say it was necessary to create a certain atmosphere of paranoia for Mrs. Hudson's simulation. And it worked. Perfectly."

"Who was following us? One of your bums? I could have killed him, Sherlock! Are you that careless with other people's life?"

"No and no. First, you wouldn't have killed him unless you saw a gun in his hand, which he did not have. And second, I was there to stop you in the more probable eventuality that you beat the crap out of him. One last thing: you were misdiagnosed. You do not have PTSD."

"No, I do not."

"Then you do realise who am I for you?"

"Who?"

"Your drug dealer," Sherlock says just as the limousine slows down and comes to a stop in the middle of a construction dump site. In the middle of huge piles of dirt and rocks, the lonely silhouette of Mycroft Holmes stands ten to fifteen meters in front of us, a shadow barely visible at the edge of the cold halo of light cast by the xenon front beam.

"Ah! Mycroft! Always underestimating my abilities!" Sherlock says with a satisfaction and even a sense of victory in his voice as he steps out of the car.

I frown. What is he saying now? What is going on between these two again?

"Oh! Do I? But we'll see that matter later if you don't mind, I have more urgent business to discuss with you."

"What? Is England in danger again?"

"Indeed, I fear our country is in a tight spot again."

"The bus wreck?"

"Yes, Sherlock. The bus wreck. As you may know, it is virtually impossible for two street lights to turn green at the same time. Safeguards in such a case would turn them red and flashing. We've found that those safeguards were tampered with. And we've found something else in our diagnostic too. A mark. A signature."

"One that you recognized."

"Yes. Indeed. One we did recognize."

"So, who is this hacker?"

"Oh, he was going by many names," says Mycroft as he turns his icy gaze on me in a way that makes my blood freeze.

" _Was_ going? asks Sherlock, intrigued. But not for long. I know his wonderful mind just made the link as soon as his eyes, even icier than his brother's, set on me too.

"I've never underestimated you, my childish brother, but you still lack the perspective to decipher the bigger scheme because of your sandpit investigations. Anyway, we'll discuss this later. For now, let's focus on what matters here, shall we? Captain Watson?

"Yes," say I, straightening my position upon being called by my rank.

"Nothing happened," slowly articulates Mycroft Holmes, still staring at me.

A lump forms in my throat. So I was right. I did see _him_. I could not check that he died. Nobody did check. That mission was a bloody mess from the start.

"Nothing happened, but here it happens again. Do you understand?"

From the corner of the eye, I can see Sherlock rolling his out of annoyance. A deep, frustrating annoyance that is gonna burst in three, two…

"For God's sake, Mycroft! Either you tell me right now what's going on or I swear I will put John on the grill as soon as your pathetic back is turned. Your childish feud is only delaying my understanding of _your_ problem. You are the one to put England at risk right now!"

"I can move away if you prefer," say I, not only tired of their game but aware that some information about our mission were never revealed to our unit for some good reasons that it is not my place to hear.

"No, you can stay, doctor Watson. You proved on many occasions that you are a trustworthy fellow."

The pleasure of being granted security clearance on this affair is short lived. Stunned, I listen to Mycroft's revelations about the real identity of our unit's target, Akmar Alladi - the man who managed God only knows how, to hack into our secured networks for several months, stealing our patrols missions, killing and wounding too many of us - of his influential biological father, a man whose Welsh ancestry probably goes as far back as the first stone in Hadrian's wall.

"I know how to get him," I whisper when Mycroft stops talking five minutes later, not liking the risky plan that forms in my mind.

"How?" Sherlock asks.

"He's after me."

"I will move up your surveillance one notch to level four then," says Mycroft.

"On the contrary. Remove all surveillance."

"And allow him to make his move," says the older Holmes.

"What surveillance, Mycroft?" asks Sherlock indignantly.

"Are you certain? It's been a long time since you haven't been on the field."

"Like you said the first time we met: I've never really quitted."

"Well. Consider it done by the time you reach your flat."

"What surveillance, Mycroft?" Sherlock asks again, anger now filling his voice.

"Oh! Com'on, Sherlock. Now that you're beginning to grasp whom you're sharing your flat with, this should not come as a surprise. What kind of big brother would I be if I did not worry about your acquaintances?"

"That doesn't give you the right to spy on me!"

Here they are bickering again at each other. Taking a deep breath, I walk back to the limousine, Sherlock following in my footsteps after proclaiming a threat to retaliate.

"Anthea?" Asks Sherlock as he dives in the rear compartment. "Would you do me a favour?"

Mycroft's assistant raises an intrigued eye from her mobile.

"That depends," she says, eye back on the backlit screen.

"I'm sure you realise by now that my friend here is desperately attracted by your charms so it would not be that difficult a task for you to check if he has a tattoo on his right buttock."

"Sherlock! I. Do. Not. Have. A. Tattoo!"


	5. Chapter 5

_Thank you for following the story :)_

* * *

A cloudy dawn laboriously appears above London's streets when I open the clinic's door the next morning.

After casting a look at the deserted sidewalks, I deactivate the security system quickly, close and lock the door before swapping the half darkness still swallowing the waiting room for anything out of place. Confident that I am alone, I walk down the corridor to Sarah's office. It is too soon for Alladi to make his move.

I barely thought this, that a shadow in the corridor makes my body tense.

The rapidity of the attack keeps me from drawing my gun out of its belt holster, forcing me to duck to dodge a blow to my throat. With my arms, I block a knee from hitting my face, but the brutal force is enough to send me crashing into the wall and collapsing on the hard floor.

 _His first mistake_ , I think.

On the ground, my size is not a liability. Years of judo allow me to block another kick and sweep his legs, sending him crashing backward into the narrow corridor. Taking advantage of this brief twist in the situation, I leap on him and seize his arms in a lock. But he anticipated and free his left arm, immediately locking my right one. Not able to strangle him anymore, I throw my leg up to use it as a hammer on his crotch. He anticipates again and we entangle our legs. For a couple of seconds, we hold each other in this tight position. We both know that the first one to let go is dead. Immediate consequence: things get dirty at the same moment.

I dig my teeth in his ear, while he digs his in my hand. I didn't let go much, but in an effort not to release his arm, my grasp on his right leg weakens. I know at once that I failed and shift my weight. As I move, his knee violently hits my stomach. Alas! My abs are not in as good a shape as they were ten years ago. The blow is not only more painful that I care to admit, it also weakens my lock on his arm further. I have to let go and retreat to a safer distance, standing up again.

Counter-attacking fast, I throw myself on the ground in front of him, kicking his legs as hard as I can. He crashes on the ground again. Losing no time, I jump on him as he picks himself up, and head butt him. His nose breaks with an enjoyable snap. My back wedged against the wall, I catch him in a strangling lock, pushing hard with my legs on the facing wall to strengthen my hold.

A searing pain suddenly explodes in my thigh.

In the half darkness, I see Alladi removing the blade of the knife he's just planted in my leg. His elbow then digs violently in my stomach, causing me to let him go. Dragging my injured leg, I move away from him when a blinding light suddenly sends burning needles through my eyes, quickly followed by a sharp cry. My heart racing, I apply a desperate pressure on my wound, expecting the killing blow to hit me any second now. Warm blood's oozing through my fingers, not spurting...

 _Good. Means the artery's not touched_ , I tell myself, now gasping for breath. Why am I still alive?

Black dots are floating in front of my eyes, cold sweat breaking out of every pore of my skin… tremor. I don't feel good... Maybe the artery's cut finally.

"Doctor Watson? Oh my god! Doctor Watson?"

"Run away, Madeleine…" I try to warn her, feeling weaker by the second.

"He's gone, Doctor Watson! By the window of your office. The police and an ambulance are on their way. A junkie searching for pills again! That's the third time this year, but they've never assaulted one of us so far. Doctor Wat..."

The increasing buzzing in my ears now quiets all the sounds around me. I'm barely aware that Madeleine's crouching next to me, barely aware that the pressure on my wound is nowhere near enough. Black dots thicken... I have to fight to stay awake. I must not pass out. Slowly, my sight gets a little bit clearer as I cling onto reality.

"Doctor Watson?"

"I'm okay…" say I as Lestrade appears suddenly above me.

Confusion seizes me as I realize that I'm lying down on a gurney. I must have lost consciousness at some point.

"Doctor Watson? Did you see your assailant?"

"Can't you do that later, sir?" Someone I can't see asks.

 _A paramedic probably_ , I wonder, turning my head. Yes. A paramedic.

"No. I need to know as much as possible while his memory's fresh. Doctor Watson?"

"It was still dark… couldn't make out his face."

"His size then?"

"Around one meter eighty; at least one hundred fifty pounds."

"Hair colour?"

I shake my head. That's all the information I'll give him to keep the police occupied.

"Sherlock?" I enquire.

"He's in your office, doing his usual stuff. I'll go now and see if he's got more to tell about this junkie going after veterans. You can go," Lestrade then says to the paramedics because the next second, I'm riding at the back of an ambulance, all sirens blaring.

"We'll be at the 256 Field MH in less than ten, sir."

"I prefer Barts."

The 256 has Harry's phone as an emergency contact. She's probably already on her way. Damn! Last think I need is a sermon.

"Sorry, but your file says 256."

What file? I don't carry my medical file on me. Madeleine must have told them.

"Barts is closer. And Mike Stamford's my doctor now. He's head of orthopedics trauma. Call him."

"All right, if you insist. Hey! Jesse! Patient requests to go to Barts! Now relax and try not to fall asleep. Think you can do that?"

"I know the drill."

Barts emergency room is filled with its usual organized chaos when we arrive; doctors, nurses, patients, parents and friends of all ages coming and going, inquiring, asking for news, information, lost and founds. In a matter of minutes, I find myself lying on an exam bed, hooked to a blood pressure monitor, an oxygen meter on my left index, and a reassuring promise that my old friend's going to be there shortly. I'm bracing myself for a long wait time when the door opens.

"What the bloody hell happened to you, John?" Mike asks as he enters the room.

"Got stabbed."

"Yeah. I can see that," Mike replies as he puts on exam gloves and drag a chair with his foot to sit next to me. "You know, for a moment, I considered giving your leg to one of my brilliant, young things."

"What made you change your mind?" I ask as he removes the tourniquet, applying a sterile compress to control the flow of blood.

"No pain?" he asks when he doesn't see me react to the pressure.

"Leg's feeling pretty numb right now… what made you change your mind?"

"A text from our friend about ten minutes ago, explicitly asking for me to take care of you, and another one a second later to warn Molly of his arrival, followed by a last one not to call Harry in any case before talking to you first. With all that, how could I resist the curiosity to hear your story? How numb your leg?"

"Don't even feel my toes. Well… nothing fancy. I came into work early, stumbled upon a junkie ravaging the clinic, foolishly tried to stop him, got stabbed, end of the story," say I as Mike starts to clean the blood around my wound to get a clearer view of the cut.

"Any other symptoms?"

"I felt weird pretty fast, like I was going into shock as if the artery had been cut. Sweat, tremor, a stinging feeling in the whole leg, a bout of nausea, and then numbness."

"Your artery is just fine. But your intervention report says you blacked out for about ten minutes. Did you hit your head?"

"Once or twice, against the wall or the floor..."

At my vague answer, Mike puts a light in my eyes, before looking for a bump on my scalp.

"No sign of head trauma," he says with a sigh as he stands up and opens drawers and cupboards until he finds a blood collection tube and a needle.

"If you don't mind," he says, putting a tourniquet on my left arm. "Just in case something illegal has been introduced into your body through that knife. There's some hard stuff flooding the streets nowadays. You should see what ends up in our ER. We have security now. Your immunization record's up to date, right?"

"Yes, it is. I saw your two guards at arrivals."

"Trouble tends to follow the sirens sometimes. No later than two weeks ago, a young man was assaulted by another just as the medics pulled him out of the ambulance. We'll get the results by the end of the afternoon," he says as he puts the vial of blood on a rack and comes back to sit next to me. "The bleeding's slowing nicely, already showing signs of clotting on the edges" he adds, poking around the wound, gently first, then harder. "Still not feeling anything?"

"Nope."

"Okay. We'll take advantage of this and spare you the risk of an unwanted interaction with the anaesthetic. I need you to put pressure here while I stitch you up, preferably before your leg decides to wake up."

For the next ten minutes, I assist Mike in closing the cut. He's almost finished when I suddenly hiss in pain.

"Feeling's coming back?"

"Yep… definitely. Pins and needles…"

"That's a good thing. I'd like you to stay overnight so we can check that no damage to the nerve has been done."

"I didn't have any plan for tonight anyway."

"Here you are. Fifteen more stitches to your thigh, to go with that other scar you got abroad. So much for saying that thunder never striking twice at the same place."

"Don't tell me..." I mutter as he turns away to dispose of his gloves in the biosafety trash bin.

Mike is giving me a box of ibuprofen when the door suddenly opens on Sherlock, dressed like a surgeon, a mask hanging around his neck.

"I've been told there's a patient here to operate," he says as he walks straight to the counter along the wall and puts on gloves.

"And who could have told you that?" Mike asks, though I can tell by the smile on his face that he's not taking him seriously.

"Two bodies in the mortuary. And dead corpses never lie."

"Bodies don't talk, Sherlock."

"Maybe to you both. But to me, they have tons of confidences to make. Oh, good. You took a blood sample out of him, Mike. Thank you," says he before storming out of the room with the vial, only to reappear a second later through the doorframe. "I can show you if you're done here."

"Let me get you a wheelchair."

"Thanks, Mike."

By the time the elevator's door opens on the mortuary, a great tiredness overwhelms my body and I am not so sure about following Sherlock Holmes down the rabbit hole, and with him, the trip usually begins with a close examination of a body on a slab, or two in the present instance.

"MOLLY?!" He calls as he walks into the autopsy room.

The door leading to the analytical laboratory opens right away.

"Yes?" Molly says, coming quickly toward us. "Oh, doctor Watson. I heard about your aggression. I hope you're feeling better."

"Tired."

"That's understand-"

"You'll convey your pathetic solicitude later Molly, I need you to analyse this vial of John's blood. Run it through the entire drug library, mass spec, and EM."

"Okay," she replies, sending me an embarrassed glance before rushing back to the lab.

I'll remind her about safe handling of biological samples another time.

"Do you know, John, what's the most peculiar thing not to find on a person who dies of an overdose?" He asks as he turns his focus back on Johnson's body.

"No, a lottery ticket?"

"I'll put this nonsense on the blood loss you suffered. No, the most peculiar thing not to find is an entry point. No injection mark, no trace on their lips, mouth, oesophagus, nose, rectum. Blood analysis confirmed they died of an overdose, but there's absolutely no sign of how the drug got in there in the first place."

"The stab wound then," I wince, not liking this at all.

"AH! You're not brain dead, finally. Yes, the stab wounds. The most logical assertion indeed, the flesh being damaged enough to hide a puncture hole. Now, John. Do you know what is the most peculiar thing to find?" Sherlock asks, a burning fever in his icy blue eyes.

"A parking ticket?" I say, distracted by the increasing burning pain in my thigh.

 _Pain's good. Means there's no heroin in your body,_ I tell myself. At least, not anymore, and that's even better because if there was, the dose wasn't a lethal one obviously.

"What is this new obsession? You don't even own a car, maybe doesn't even know how to drive. Heroin's half time is quick, a few minutes, then morphine can last in the system for three to seven hours. After seventy-two hours, ninety percent of the dose is usually eliminated in the urine. We found ninety-six and ninety-seven percent respectively of non-metabolized morphine in the victim's blood, and morphine-6-glucuronide at saturation concentration in their kidneys and urine, telling us that at the moment of their death, heroin was still pumped at insane doses in their bodies. A two-days long overdose that killed them in the first hour."

"So the killer kept on injecting them, even after their death," say I, trying to make sense of the weird results of the autopsies.

"That would seem the logical answer… and yet, at least in one case, we have witnesses stating that the victim was left alone during that time."

"Com'on, Sherlock. Tramps hardly make for reliable witnesses," say I, just as the lights in the mortuary go out.

Oh, great! Is there a creepier place for a power outage than a cold autopsy room while bodies are out on slabs? Silently, I count the seconds, like one would count the time between the lightning and the thunder, expecting the emergency generators to kick in.

Thirty seconds. One minute. Then two.

"The mortuary is on emergency power, right?" I ask, taking out my mobile to use it as a flashlight.

"Well, at least the freezers are, to prevent the corpses from rotting. The ventilation stopped too."

"Wonderful," say I, carefully wheeling my way toward the door. "By the way, I know how to drive," I add just as I try to turn the knob, to no avail. "Sherlock? It's locked!"


	6. Chapter 6

_"Famous consulting detective and associate found dead, asphyxiated in a morgue!"_

That will certainly make for a selling title for a story if I can't get this door to open or if the ventilation does not start working again soon!

"No use, we're locked in!"

"Don't be ridiculous," snaps Sherlock. "Magnetic locks need electricity to work. Without power, the door stays open. Basic security safeguards."

"Then, maybe it's my swipe card. Come and try yours," I say, alarmed to see him examining Matthews's body under the light of his own mobile phone, probably still looking for an injection site. How can he stand the acrid, stinging smell of ether and putrefaction mixed together?

"Did you hear what I just said? It is not a matter of entry pass."

"Sherlock?! Humor me."

With a dexterity and precision that surprise me, he throws his card to me without raising his eyes from his meticulous task.

"Not working either. Great! We're trapped until the power gets back or someone gets to worry where we are."

Feeling irritated, I wheel my way back to the slab and wince at the definitely aggressive smell that burns my eyes and throat.

"Could you please put the bodies back in their freezer before we suffocate from the putrefaction gasses?" I complain, covering my mouth with my hand. "The temperature must have risen at least ten degrees."

"What a sensitive nose you have, but indeed the decomposition seems to have slightly accelerated, even if I doubt that the slight temperature variation has anything to do with it," Sherlock replies as I decide that a standing position would be better for my lungs.

Holding my breath, I carefully haul myself up and notice with some satisfaction that my thigh is not hurting as much as I feared.

"You know, it's not always true what you said about magnetic locks," say I. "In high-level security laboratories, the doors are designed to lock in case of power failure, so nothing or no one would be able to get out."

"Even if I like to think of myself as a national security risk, unfortunately, Barts did not agree with my request to increase my workplace protection level to such a degree. Therefore, if the door is still locked, either a physical object is causing some obstruction in the doorframe, or we still have electricity. In this latter case, this power outage is faked. Someone wants to distract us from examining those corpses. The killer in all probability, though I can't completely rule out my dear brother's tendency to play me tricks, to set me on a wrong path to prove how easily distracted my mind can be. So wrong he is, as always. But I don't think it is the case right now. The stakes are too high for our childish feud."

"A faked power outage? How can one fake such a thing? And if you're right, then our swipe cards should still be working."

"Not if they have been deactivated. Considering Barts's obsolete and incompetent IT department, and that our killer is a skilled hacker, this would not surprise me at all. Unexpectedly turn off lights and everyone inside a room will wonder how long the outage will last. Our minds are set to jump to easy conclusions."

"Sherlock, Doctor Watson?"

"Yes, Molly?" Sherlock shouts.

"I'm locked in! Could you open the door from your side, please?"

"This is getting annoying," Sherlock mutters as he lifts his head from the body.

With a certain curiosity, I observe him going straight for the axe hung next to the fire extinguisher.

"Move away from the door, Molly!"

"Why?" she asks a mere second before Sherlock lifts the axe above his head and, like a maniac woodcutter, strikes the knob repeatedly until it yields in pieces at his feet in the middle of light cream painted, wood shards. Sherlock one, door zero.

My ears are still ringing from the clashes when the beam of Molly's flashlight suddenly blinds me.

"I was looking at a sample of Doctor Watson's blood under the EM, and… there's something weird you should see when the power comes back."

"Define weird," says Sherlock as he takes Molly's flashlight out of her hand and steps in the analytical lab.

"A swarm of particulates, the size of a virus, but definitively no virus. They don't seem to be attacking the blood cells, but it looked like some of them are excreting something. I was just taking a closer look at a denser aggregate when all the lights turned off."

"Particulates? Interesting. John? What do you know about nanotechnologies?"

"Not much. What I read here and there in the press," say I, feeling suddenly very worried. "Molly? How dense the "denser aggregate" you were looking at?"

"Oh, not enough to cause a particulate-blood-clot, I think..."

 _Great! I'm gonna suffer from embolism any second now._

"Some are excreting something you said..." continues Sherlock, "like an artificial drug delivery system then... What do you think, John?"

"That it's still highly experimental. Don't know of any major breakthrough in the field."

As I say these words, Molly and Sherlock exchange an annoyed glance.

"Well, I think someone just made a major breakthrough, at least in illegal drug delivery," Molly says, looking at me in the eye briefly before lowering her gaze toward the ground, embarrassed.

"Illegal?" ask I, jumping from worried to panicky.

"The sample under the EM tested positive for heroin," Molly winced, looking at the ground again.

"Of course it tested positive. Look at him fidgeting on his injured leg like a kazachok dancer. That would certainly explain a few things. Nanoparticles filled with drug, programmed to release their illegal cargo slowly into the blood stream, even after the death of the subject."

"Maybe you should sit down, Doctor Watson."

Molly's not looking at the ground! She's staring at my legs, I realize with shock. I've been standing up, on my two feet, fidgeting as Sherlock says, not as a kazachok dancer though, but anyway, that's something I should not be able to do considering how fresh are the fifteen stitches on my thigh.

Now I'm panicking. Definitively panicking. My heart starts pumping faster in my chest, I wonder how I get these things out of me? Hemodialysis? Old Franklin is still chief of Barts's Ambulatory Nephrology department, just four stories up.

"Size under ten nanometers... I don't see another way than transfusing new blood in your veins," says Sherlock.

"I need to get out of here," I whisper, going back to the door to try my card again. It's silly, I know. But it's better to try than to stay put, waiting for embolism or overdose to kill me.

"You need to relax and sit down, John. If Allaoui wanted to kill you, he would have done so this morning. No, he doesn't want to kill you, not yet, not so fast. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this fake power outage masks the fact that our computers have just been hacked."

"Why would he do that?"

"Well, we did two autopsies for him," Sherlock replies, "Surely he wants to know the results of his experiment."

"Experiment? You think I'm a damn, bloody guinea-pig?"

A buzz from my mobile sounds and a long sigh escapes my lips.

 _Where r u? Call me. H._

 _"_ A problem?" Sherlock asks.

"No. Just Harry looking for me. I guess the 256 called her finally."

 _I'm fine. Don't worry. J._

Here, I hope it will be enough to reassure her.

When I raise my eyes from the small screen, I meet one of Sherlock's intrigued glances.

"You were supposed to go to the 256, but you did not."

"Yes, indeed," I reply.

My phone buzzes again.

 _Where r u? H._

Insistent. Here it goes again. Harry wanting to control my life.

 _Barts. W_

I've barely typed the w in "working" that Sherlock snatches my phone from my hand.

"Sorry. More pressing matters than your drunk, worried sister."

"Did you send the text as is?"

"Yes," he replies, his eyes on the screen as his fingers quickly type a text.

"Great! No, really! Now she's going to rush to Barts to check on me."

"Unfortunate but that's what siblings do, John."

"And anyway, why did you need to use my mobile when yours is in your pocket?"

"Security reason."

"There's no security on mine. No encrypting like in yours."

"Exactly my point."

A buzz.

"Oh no. She's on her way. That's your fault! That's entirely your bloody fault!"

"I don't understand," says Molly. "You should be grateful to have a sister caring for you, Dr. Watson. You too, Sherlock. You're both lucky to have siblings."

At that intervention, Sherlock and I stare at each other for a long, bewildered second before saying together: "Nope." "Wrong."

On that, I'm quickly taking back my phone and send a text to Harry to ask her not to come when it buzzes again.

"Mycroft's gonna increase the security at the 256 BSL-four laboratory," I read out loud. "But I thought there were only level-three labs there?"

"An underground detail that is not known to the common people, and that I discovered myself only a little while ago when I was thinking and rethinking our country's weaknesses to bioterrorism in one of my sleepless nights."

A buzz. Again. Sherlock snatches the mobile before I can read.

"Your sister's asking how hard you hit your head to sign W. instead of J. when talking to her. Valid point, I must say. What's her profession already?"

"Never told you," I reply, "and I didn't sign W."

"Psychologist?"

"You can keep on guessing for the rest of your life," say I, looking away and feeling dreadful for doing it.

"Close but worse. She's a psychiatrist then. Oh, yes, she's a psychiatrist and she wanted to help you deal with the aftermath of your turn in Afghanistan. This is why you didn't want to ask her for help, her drinking is only a side of your reasons that drives you to run away from your torturous sibling relationship."

"No, it's the whole damn problem. I don't want to ask her for help because she is not even able to help herself and get her life back under control so how can she even think that she can help me reinserting myself in the society? Barts was right to fire her and I still don't understand why she didn't lose her license. She's putting her patient at risk."

A buzz.

"Mycroft asks us to go to the 256's research facility so I can identify Allaoui. Why does your brother think he's over there?"

Another buzz, from Sherlock's phone.

"Interesting," Sherlock says.

Then, without another word, he seizes the axe again and, exhilaration gleaming in his pupils, energetically smashes the exit door down.


	7. Chapter 7

_Thank you for sticking with me and reading my story :)_

* * *

At four-fifty on a Thursday afternoon, the three-mile taxi ride from Barts to the 256 takes us almost thirty minutes. Way too frustrating for Sherlock who's jumping out onto the pavement for the fourth time for... I follow his dark silhouette fraying like a salmon in the middle of the small crowd... ten meters. Half the distance he covered the previous time. At this rhythm, next time he will have barely put a foot out that he will get back in the cab.

"People are so slow today and noisy! It's unbearable," he says to explain his hasty return.

"Sherlock? What if we have this all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Even if I'd gone to the 256 instead of Barts, why would you think there's a threat to the BSL4 facility?" I ask, struggling to make sense.

"I don't think there's a threat to the BSL4."

"Then why are we going there?"

"Because they happen to have one of the best electron microscopes in the world and an expert on nanotechnologies. Aren't you curious to know what's in your blood?"

"Sure. What I don't understand is why does your brother think Allaoui would be there?"

"One, because I used your phone, and two, because there's a reasonable chance that he has an accomplice inside the place. An expert accomplice," Sherlock replies as our taxi stops in front of the 256 building A - personnel entrance.

"So, I'm a bait then?"

"Sort of," Sherlock says, energetically stepping out under the sunny sky.

The intense luminosity makes me squint.

"How is your leg feeling?" he asks, coming back to the taxi when he realises that I did not follow.

A deep sigh rises from my tense body as I extract myself out of the cabin, wishing for my sunglasses.

"I can walk."

"Good. Warn me when you think you can fly."

"Not funny."

"If it can reassure you, I asked Mycroft to have a medical team on standby here at the 256. You'll be as fine as possible considering your unusual situation."

For the next ten minutes, I try to ignore the heavyweight crushing, twisting, and tearing every single millimeter of my intestines apart while we fill the formalities at the first security booth. After having submitted all of our fingers and right eye to biometrics controls, a young corporal leads us to an elevator, gets in with us, and uses his swipe card to authorize our descent to the third, underground level.

"Is there another access point?" I ask, judging unlikely that Allaoui can use this entry to get in the facility.

"Yes, sir. Two others. Down level two, a corridor leading to the hospital C wing, and a goods-lift at shipping and receiving. All the others have been sealed off."

"How many others exactly?" Sherlock asks.

"I don't know, sir. The building's pretty old, and some modifications date back to the second world war," the young corporal replies just as the elevator's door opens.

The intensity of the ceiling lights makes me squint as I observe the small hall, more of an airlock actually with another security booth, two armed sentries next to a fire-resistant door that I imagine must give access to the laboratories.

We are told to wait there for our escort to arrive. Sherlock's impatience is betrayed by a movement of his right hand in his pocket while he tries to see through the narrow glass panel on the door what lays beyond the airlock.

"What is it you have in your pocket? » I whisper, curious.

"You'll see," he replies just as the door opens on a man with gray, short-cut hair and a white coat.

"Colonel Pattinson!" say I, surprised to see the man who patched me up back in Afghanistan.

"Captain Watson! Glad to see you. How are you doing these days?"

"Good. I'm good."

"How is your leg?"

"Walking."

"Happy to hear it."

"So, you're in charge of this facility?"

"Yes. I've decided a change in-"

"Why don't you two go to the cafeteria to discuss old good times while I focus on what brings us here and go to the EM lab?" Intervenes Sherlock.

Quickly, I make the presentations and notice that, in fact, Pattinson does not seem too happy to see us here. But then, the whole situation is quite unorthodox, to say the least. So, after a quick exchange of courtesy, followed by more blinding retina controls, we finally walk through the door and silently follow our host in a long, white corridor with offices on one side and laboratories on the other.

"The BSL4 is further down, at the center of two level-three laboratories," Pattinson says as we arrive at a T-junction, nodding quickly to the corridor on our right before turning left, adding: "but before we go to the lab, I'd like to clear some concerns first, if you don't mind."

"There are no concern to have," Sherlock says.

"What kind of sample are you going to observe under the EM?" Pattinson asks.

"Blood. Human. Not contagious. Class three by precaution only."

"I'll need more information to allow you to work."

"No, you don't."

"Perhaps you don't realise, but people who get to work in a BSL3 usually have at least a Ph.D., Mr. Holmes."

"What I realise is that ordinary people have a title because of their childish need to be granted access to a select club. Unless it is their unresolved, incestuous love for their mother to see her eyes gleam with pride when they finally obtain that common piece of paper. Thank god! As I do not have any of those petty needs, subjecting myself to the judgment of presumptuous pseudo-scientists never distracted me from my numerous interests. But if you insist, _Doctor_ Watson will be happy to hear and clear any of your concerns while I conduct my own experiment that should not take more than thirty minutes. I accept being accompanied only if your man does not talk."

Pattinson cast me a shocked glance as Sherlock turns right in the corridor and starts to walk toward the BSL4 laboratory.

"However, if you have more _concerns_ with your orders, I suggest you call your superiors!" Sherlock shouts without looking back, outrageously confident that he is in his right. And his brother being his brother, he probably is.

"You can trust him," say I, embarrassed a little by Sherlock's behavior because Pattinson does not deserve such disdain.

Quickly, Pattinson walks to the only office with an opened door.

"Peter? Could you go down to the four and assist a guest with the EM?"

"How did you end up with such a highly-connected jerk?" Pattinson mutters as I watch a man in his thirties, boots and hair cut saying military, quickly walk down the corridor.

"Long story. Not much activity around here," say I, wondering just how much information I should give him.

"We're preparing for a decontamination, so most works have been put on standby for a couple of days. Let's go to my office."

As we walk along the lifeless laboratories and closed offices, I cast a half-curious half-worried glance through each window, feeling the place a bit too clean to my liking. Empty walls, cold, sterile atmosphere... Even an operating room would look more welcoming, would transpire more joy of living than this facility. Or maybe this effect is caused by the artificial lighting.

"Headache?" Pattinson asks when I wince and massage my eyes to get rid of the sudden dark spots.

"Just some light sensitivity."

"There's a small UV component in our lights. Some very sensitive people wear tinted lenses to work here."

"Yeah. Do you?"

"No. I'm fine. Any chance I can coerce you to join my research team?"

"Why? Do you have a virus to shoot?" I ask, shaking my head to the dreadful vision of being trapped all day long behind tubes and Petri dishes. But when I meet Pattinson's eyes again, I realise my sarcasm has embarrassed him, so I add: "However, I wouldn't mind getting a refresher on nanoparticles as drug delivery systems."

"Here, come in," Pattinson says as he opens the door to his office. "A pretty wide subject. What do you want to know exactly?"

"How to get rid of nano drug delivery systems in someone's blood is of particular interest for me," say I, looking around the cramped, underground room.

A mahogany, L-shaped desk with a computer and a laptop; piles and piles of scientific publications; cluttered floating shelves; ground to ceiling bookcases; five-drawer file cabinets and above them, a few frames: diplomas, scientific posters of works published in Nature, Cell, Journal of Virology, works probably not from this facility but from the hospital research department. Collaborations then.

"What do you mean, for you?" Pattinson asks as my eyes freeze on a frame on the central shelf of the bookcase.

My throat suddenly feels very dry. And like a bass drum produces a roaring thunder, my eardrum vibrates from the blood rushing through my veins.

The picture shows a joint unit of British and Afghani soldiers. Matthews, Pattinson, and Allaoui...

"When was this picture taken?"

"Three years ago. Why?"

So before our mission. Of course before our mission! After it, Allaoui was dead, wasn't he? Is he, really? _He is,_ I say to myself as my memories of the day I killed him resurface once more. I was with Matthews, climbing the stairs of the building across the street, facing the one from where the signal was coming. Sholvo and Johnson waiting to get our go before moving in.

I see again the half-opened door I was pushing with my foot to check if the flat was empty when Matthews had sworn between his teeth and suddenly taken off, shouting: "It's him! Watson! It's him!"

"John?" ask Pattinson, bringing me back to the present.

"I... I think I recognize a face..." I whisper before clearing my voice and showing Allaoui on the picture to Pattinson. "This man."

"Oh, him? Larzo Barzan. He used to be our interpret."

Barzan? Fake identity. And interpret? So working on the base.

Of course... Now everything's so clear.

"When's the last time you saw him?" I ask, feeling tenser by the second.

"Two hours ago, maybe."

"What the hell! Are you telling me that he is working here?!" I exclaim just as a siren blares like bombs are gonna fall on our heads.


	8. Chapter 8

What did Sherlock do? is the first question coming to my mind upon hearing the alarm. Did he spill my blood on the ground and triggered a biosafety alert? No. Unlikely.

"Fire alarm?"

"Stay here! I'm gonna check what's going on!" shouts Pattinson before walking out of his office.

Maybe the facility has just been hacked, like the morgue earlier? No. This is even more unlikely than Sherlock being clumsy behind a microscope. Anyway, Barts' security network must be insignificant compared to this facility's. Remains an intruder alert.

However improbable, the tiny possibility of Allaoui - or Barzan, whatever his name - roaming the corridors pushes me to ignore the colonel's request to stay in position. Not being military anymore certainly has some advantages.

I've barely put a foot outside of Pattinson's office that an armed sentry carrying a laptop shoves me back in, stops abruptly on his way, and comes back to check my identity. After showing him my visitor pass, he lets me behind and rushes in the corridor, showing me the way to the BSL4 laboratory.

"Stay calm, Holmes! Do not panic! Your suit will protect you!" I hear Pattinson shouting as the corridor suddenly ends in front of an airlock with ground-to-ceiling glass panels; an intercom on the right wall allows communication with the high-security laboratories without needing to get in.

The sentry that controlled me a minute ago acknowledges an order from the colonel and shoves me again as he runs back from where we came while Pattinson logs in the computer he's just been brought.

"I know that," Sherlock's voice comes out, loud and clear as the siren suddenly stops. "Now I would appreciate if you restrain yourself from disturbing me, and instead work on turning the formaldehyde gas cylinders off."

Worried by what I just heard, I look through the windows into the BSL3 lab and try to decipher Sherlock's silhouette inside the four, to no avail. Large pieces of equipment are blocking the view.

"What's going on?" I ask when Pattinson lets out a curse.

"For some reason I can't fathom, the fumigation process started early and he's locked in."

"What do you mean started early?"

"Ten hours early. Jansen, are you all right?"

"I'm good, sir. Oxygen line's still on. Obviously." The scientist who accompanied Sherlock to the lab replies as the screen suddenly displays the security video feed from the BSL4.

Sherlock is sitting at the EM station, acting as if no cloud of sterilizing, lethal gas was being released from ventilation shafts all around his head. What if he moves and scratches his suit? He'll be dead in a couple of seconds!

"Sherlock?! Don't move a toe, all right? Stay calm!" I warn him.

"I am calm. Why is everybody telling me to calm down when I am obviously the calmest person in the place. I perfectly know that the suit will protect me."

"Are you sure their suits are gas tight?" I ask.

"Type one suits. They're not in immediate danger," the colonel says before muttering a curse.

"What now?"

"The system is not responding," the colonel says, focusing back on the screen. "The technical room access door is locked as well. I've sent for welding equipment. As soon as we get it open, we'll turn off the cylinders manually and purge the gas."

"Okay," Jansen says, doing a thumbs-up in front of his computer-embedded camera.

Pattinson utters a sigh of relief, a sentiment that I hardly share.

"Calm down, Watson, they're gonna be out in less than ten minutes," Pattinson says.

"Yes," I reply, trying to take deep breaths.

"Stop fidgeting, John, you're distracting me," says the man in the middle of the fog I can barely see him now.

"What?! How do you know anyway? You can't even see me!"

"But I can hear you perfectly. I can tell you're walking back and forth in front of the airlock. You need to calm down. Relax, take a deep breath, and move away from the laptop," says Sherlock just as Pattinson suddenly straightens up as if a bee had just stung him.

"What the hell is he looking at?! Jansen! Did you authorize him to take this sample?"

"He's working on a sample of his own, Sir. Not one of ours."

"How could he possibly..."

Pattinson stops in the middle of his sentence and stares at me with a gravity in his eyes that I've seen on very few occasions in Afghanistan, and certainly not the most cheerful ones.

"What?" I ask, my concern growing exponentially.

Pattinson's about to say something when the sentry appears with the requested welding equipment and puts it down in the recess that shelters the emergency shower, and a door.

"Let's focus on getting them out first, and then, we'll have a talk," Pattinson replies, his voice way too calm for my peace of mind. So Sherlock was right to come here. Pattinson has answers for us.

"That sounds good to me," I say, uneasy, before whispering in the intercom: "Sherlock, did you cause the alarm?"

"Me? No! I've nothing to do with this. But you might, John. Tell me: how is your sight?"

"A bit sensitive but otherwise normal, why?"

Well... to think of it, it's a bit shady on the edges, I realise with a certain concern that I choose to keep silent for now.

"Listen to me very carefully, John. I think the heroin that is delivered into your body is there to hide the pain caused by the aggregation of the nano-particulates. The aggregation is not random. It follows a pattern that Molly could not recognize earlier because she lacks the knowledge for it."

"What kind of pattern?"

"A semiconductor-like pattern, something I've only seen once in a prototype for an artificial retina. As soon as I get back to Barts, I'll have to re-examine the bodies' eyes. Are you positively sure your sight is normal?"

"What do you mean by artificial?" I ask, not a little scared by this information.

How could an artificial retina be created into my eyes? And if it indeed is, is it temporary? Is the increased light sensitivity the only side effect or only the first? On top of my retinas or replacing them? A million questions jostle in my mind when a realization hits me.

"Sherlock? Pattinson's first specialty is in ophthalmology..."

"This certainly is one good reason to choose him to lead this facility."

Feeling an uncomfortable mix of fear and tension sinking like an anchor in the depths of my stomach, I turn mistrusting eyes toward the colonel who, with the sentry, is still working on cutting the door lock, creating sprays of sparks. At once, a billion burning needles inflame my ocular nerves and pierce right through my brain to the back of my skull. The pain is strong enough to bend my knees, making me throw a hand to seek support on the glass wall next to me, gasping for breath.

"John?"

"I'm good. I'm okay..." I say, still panting.

From now on, no looking at any source of light anymore, I'm only looking at the ground. Unless I'm on an airplane because they have lights on the ground, emergency lights... Great! I'm raving now. There's an edge to me, I can feel it growing. Weird feeling...

"Captain?" asks Jansen, "Since when are you experiencing accrued light sensitivity?"

"Why do you care!" I snap.

I need to know... I need to know what's inside my body exactly.

"John?" says Sherlock, "Maybe you should sit down."

"Will someone explain to me what's going on?!" I say, trying to control my voice, something that proves more and more difficult by the second. "Colonel!"

"One moment, Captain Watson."

"Doctor Watson, if you don't mind!" I correct, not knowing what irritates me more: Pattinson's order as if I was still military or being denied an attention I am entitled to receive. Oh, yes, that's right. Sherlock is taking a fumigating bath. His situation being more dire than mine, he has priority, hasn't he? I'll be damned if I don't get an answer fast!

"COLONEL!"

"John?! You need to calm down!"

"I am CALM! Look at you, Sherlock! All so cool swimming in your toxic cloud! You should be the one panicking!"

"Are you?"

"What?"

"Panicking?"

"NO!"

Of course, I'm not. But then, why am I barking like that? Oh yeah, maybe it has something to do with the multicolour spots now dancing in front of my eyes like I'm in the middle of one of the Cargo's dance floors! I even get a headache now to beat the rhythm like the most powerful bass. What more could I want? Violins?

"Oh no! that's right I just want a bloody EXPLANATION!" I say out loud, realising that I am quite unable to keep my nervous legs from walking back and forth in front of the airlock.

"John? You need to sit down and take deep breaths, NOW!" repeats Sherlock.

"And you NEED to get out of your VAPORS!"

"John, you're not making any sense. Colonel Pattinson? A little help with the doctor."

"Because now you trust him? And what if he's the one who let loose one of his experiments in my body?" I ask, stepping back as Pattinson finally deign to look at me. Oh! They managed to open the door. The sentry is getting in with a spanner to close the cylinders. Good job.

"It's a risk we have to take," says Sherlock, coughing.

"Well, I disagree!" I say, shaking... I'm shaking...

Automatically, the medical part of my brain catalogs my symptoms. I can feel my pulse rushing, erratic, my breath, too short, a growing tension in my chest. And there's a tremor spreading under my skin... that is cold and clammy to the touch. But these are far from being the worst symptoms. No, the most worrying one is that I feel in fact good. Even more than good. Strangely energetic. I could run a marathon if I wanted to.

"Doctor Watson, please," says Pattinson from the doorframe, "I need you to follow the lieutenant to our medical facility and stay there. I'll come as soon as I've stopped the fumigation process."

"So you admit! You did this to me! You and Allaoui or Barzan, whatever his name is! You infected me with a biological weapon!" say I, rushing toward him, outrage flooding my veins at the realization that I've been used as a guinea-pig once more. How can this situation keep on happening to me?

"I assure you it is not a biological weapon."

"But it killed Johnson and Matthews and it's killing me right now! How do you call things that kill people!" I reply to Pattinson, feeling like I am a centimeter from rushing him into the wall. "What is it?! What is it? Are you gonna tell me what is it?!"

"John Watson!" suddenly shout the coughing cloud, "Let go of the colonel!"

Maybe not a centimeter away finally... ten centimeters too far more likely, I realise as I notice that every eye are turned on me with fear. Not only eyes. Guns too! Pattinson's hand, raised in the air is keeping the sentries from shooting me. Okay... let's say I'm not so calm after all.

"If I let him go, I won't get an answer. Where's your afghani friend, Colonel?" I ask, irritated.

"Doctor Barzan has nothing to see directly or indirectly with what we are doing here. He's working in oncology at the hospital, on... blimey."

"WHAT?!"

"He's working on drug delivery systems."

"Colonel!" Jansen in the middle of a rough cough.

Feeling nauseously satisfied, I snatch Pattinson's swipe card from his pocket and rush into the corridor, ignoring Sherlock's call. I'm not going to let Allaoui escape this time.


	9. Chapter 9

If feeling exceptionally good and terribly bad at the same time is one weird experience, not caring about it is downright scary.

What is left of my lucidity floats on a small, unstable boat carried away on the chaotic river that rages through my veins, drowning slowly but surely under one certainty: my time is running out fast.

Acknowledging this ultimatum, my legs climb the steps faster, the rudder set on stopping Allaoui before he kills more people because whatever his intentions are, I very much doubt that his plan is to cover Great-Britain's streets with flowers, well... other than white lilies.

Here I am: C-Wing level two is written in big white letters on the gray wall.

Careful, I push the door of the stairwell and cast a look into a corridor: narrow, turning left three meters ahead, dimly lit, in need of fresh paint. Not really used. Abandoned. Not entirely. There's a retina scanner on the left wall. Restricted access.

Retina restricted access everywhere... Not a coincidence.

 _Right you are, John. Definitively not a coincidence,_ says Sherlock's voice in my head, so clearly that I can not keep myself from looking above my shoulder. No one. Of course, no one! Damn! How far gone am I? The edge in me is more palpable with every second that pass by. I need to focus.

Artificial retina restricted access.

These four words create a kind of loop in my mind, paralyzing my feet on the doorframe when the distant echo of steps in the stairwell reverberates. Once again, I look behind me, wondering if this could be an auditory hallucination. With the heroin pumped into my blood, it is a logical assumption. And yet...

Having a hunch, I walk through the door and close it on Pattinson's swiping card, the knob still in hand, ready to open, and wait... not even five seconds. Soles hitting the steps down. Someone was hiding on the upper level.

"Not a coincidence" flashing red in my mind, I kick the door open and throw myself on Allaoui, knowing it's him before I even see his face. Did he really think he could fool me? Did he?!

Last time, I crashed on him in a clumsy way. I was trying to avoid Matthews who had just been hit and lost my balance in the staircase, falling on Allaoui a bit unexpectedly, sending us both rolling down two flights, bouncing like pinballs between the guardrail and the wall. This time, we crash on the half-landing and slide down a few steps more. I'm ready to recover, but he's quicker and I can't avoid his kick on my injured thigh.

Jaw clenched to endure the pain, I get up and rush down the stairs after him. Not caring about breaking bones anymore, and cold determination propels me forward. No way I am going to let him escape in the tunnel like before. When I jump on him again, I use my momentum to send us rolling down.

For a never-ending moment, there's no more bottom or up, left or right. There is only pain, dizziness, and rage. No fear. There should be fear, but there's none. Until I realise that I'm laying still, my body half across the steps, half across a landing and that in the weak angle of my blurry vision, I just saw Allaoui fleeing through a door. Damn! The man is hard to get down.

 _Get up, soldier!_ Sholvo's voice. _For Matthews. For Johnson. For all the others who died because of him._

"Yes, Major. For all the others..." I mutter as I stand up and walk on wobbly legs toward the door.

My heart rate spikes at the memory of Allaoui falling on me from behind, a dark corner I could not see. But he could not have tricked me this time because I've maintained eye contact with him all along. Until now. But if I saw him passing through this door, so he can't be behind me, can he?

 _But his accomplice is!_ warns Sherlock's rough, coughing voice. _John!_

Muttering a curse, I hastily step aside and barely avoid a punch to my head. The lieutenant who jostled me a couple of times earlier tries to grab me by my neck in a strangling knot but fails as I drag his arm through the door frame and shut the door close with a kick. Keeping his arm through, I bang the heavy door several times with my shoulder until I hear the terribly satisfying sound of bone yielding, followed by a cry of pain.

 _Go, John! I have him in my aim!_

Hearing Sherlock's voice coming from the stairwell makes me frown out of confusion. I don't know if it's real or if it's all in my mind. However, the lieutenant's arm, still wedged in the frame, is not moving. No sound is coming from behind the door.

 _Go! Now! Don't let Barzan run away!_

He said Barzan, not Allaoui. Real then, I decide as I let go of the door to cast a look around me.

I'm standing in the middle of an underground parking lot ramp. A narrow ramp. Badly lit ramp with a panel saying low clearance on my right. No kidding. Should I go up or down a level? Up, I decide, trusting my first instinct that made me look at the clearance sign. I might have heard a sound, I don't know, but as standing still is not an option, going with my guts is as good a strategy as another under these circumstances.

A few seconds later, I stop behind a pillar and observe the rows of cars, the pillars, the maze of pipes suspended from the ceiling... pipes... Don't go there, John. Stay in the present. Look, these pipes are not rusted at all, see? There's a fight for lucidity in me that I never imagined so difficult, so confusing to keep my feet anchored in reality. My memories keep on trying to drag me back into that tunnel where I was held prisoner for a couple of hours before Sholvo found and saved me.

Jaw clenched, I shake my head and take a deep breath. Allaoui is there somewhere, but this time I am not at his mercy. A creaking triggers a discharge of adrenaline in my blood. A door just closed somewhere on my right. Careful, I cover the distance half-crouched behind the cars and stop in front of another door, not liking at all to realise that the 256's undergroung is a maze of corridors, parking lots. There's probably dozens of technical rooms spread beneath the buildings. It would take an army to comb the place if Allaoui decides to hide.

Well, the comb has many teeth and that includes me, I tell myself as I step with precaution into another corridor, a bit wider this one, with a series of four large tanks of water plugged to pumps. The facility's filtering system.

Feeling dizzy, I stop a moment to clear my sight and slow down my erratic heart. Sholvo had told me to stop the pursuit. But finding the access to those tunnels had been a major discovery...

Gun in a firm grasp, I am raising my left hand to touch the bluish pipe above my head when a huge spanner suddenly sways the air in front of me, hitting me square in my left collarbone. The surprise almost causes me to drop my weapon. Kneeling, I dodge another blow, swirl around the arm still holding the spanner, and violently dig an elbow in Allaoui's stomach before throwing him above me, sending him to crash upside down into the wall. His head hits the ground hard. Taking advantage of his disorientation, I kick the spanner out of his hand, retreat one step, and raise my gun to his head with a satisfaction that snatches me an uncontrollable laugh and a terrible urge to snipe a pipe from the ceiling to use it on him like he did on me.

I got him! At last! YES! No scar on his throat but who cares? Hmm, who cares?!

"Who are you?!"

"You're asking the wrong question to the wrong man, Watson," Allaoui replies, his voice weak from the pain. "What you should ask... to yourself... is who did I..."

A shot echoes, as deafening as if lightning had just struck the ground one meter from me.

Covering my ears in my hands, I stumble forward and watch with horror a dark hole in Allaoui's throat pouring sprays of blood.

Dizzy, I collapse on my knees and look at the gun in my hand with incredulity... I did not shoot him... it was not me who shot him...

Who then?

"Open your eyes and stand still for a second, Doctor Watson," says a whisper with a gloved hand. A gloved hand and a blurry face that I would recognize even if I were blind.

Sheer terror gives me the force to push his arm away but not enough strength to succeed. Strangling me, Moriarty pins my head on the wall before a beam of light set my optical nerve on fire and my pulse over two hundred beats per minute.

Absolute pain is the only thing my brain registers now. And suffocation. And me dying... here. Why are the darkness so slow to come?


	10. Chapter 10

The thick fog in front of my eyes slowly starts to dissipate and the familiar voice starts to take shape. Hope seizes me: I may be not blind after all. Even if...

"I'm old enough to make my own decisions and live with the consequences..." I whisper to Harry.

"Indeed, I think you are."

"Did you catch a cold? There's a nasty bout of flu still spreading," I say, remembering that almost a quarter of Sarah's patients who came to the clinic last week showed the symptoms. Was it last week? Time is like my sight at the moment, a bit fuzzy.

"Nope."

Weird. Has Harry resumed smoking? Confused, I try to focus on the blurry silhouette next to me and realise with great surprise that my sister dyed her hair black and...

"You're sitting... on a chair..."

"Er... yes. Indeed I am sitting. We're definitely making some progress here. Another question?"

"Why?"

"Why... well, why not? What do you think? No. Don't answer this. Your neurons are still too sluggish to form a complex thought. Let's stick to simple observations. I am sitting on a chair. What more can you say about me?"

"Harry..." I whisper, not in a mood to play another round of a Rorschach game with her.

"Ah... maybe not making any progress after all."

Still not Harry's voice. More like...

"Sherlock?"

"YESSS! Ah, finally. Your eyes are now seeing reality. Welcome back, John."

The heavy weight that kept me under a dull, dark curtain suddenly lifts and the face of my pale friend appears, still a bit blurry but perfectly recognizable.

"What do you mean... reality?" I ask.

How weak and raspy my voice sounds scares me. A concern that grows when I notice that I am lying in a bed, hooked to a monitor. Hospital bed then. Steady beats. That's good to hear. My heart's beating.

"Oh. Merely that your eyes are opened for two hours now but somehow were watching a different channel."

"What... what channel?"

"What channel? You want to know what channel."

"Not making sense..."

"No, you're not. But don't worry, John, I've been there before you so I know what you are going through. With a little training, you'll be able to jump back to reality with more efficiency."

"Reality?"

"Yesss... reality."

"What happened?" I ask after taking a deep breath and wince at the pain shooting through my ribcage. Broken ribs. No doubt more than one.

"How do I tell you without alarming you... Harry was particularly adamant on this particular point and I can't disagree with her-"

"Sherlock!" I cut him, not knowing what alarms me more: that my friend is worried about causing me some distress - which is too late by the way - or that he agrees with my sister on something about me, which incidentally also means that Harry was here then and that I did not completely hallucinate her presence at my sides. A good point for my sanity, right?

"Let's just say that it would have been more fun to follow Virgil at the bottom of the ninth circle than you in an Afghan rabbit hole."

"Afghan..."

Feeling like I'm suddenly on the high seas on a heaving ship, I close my eyes to keep my stomach under control. When I open them again, relief wash over me upon noticing that Sherlock's silhouette is a bit sharper than a couple of minutes ago.

"Sorry. Maybe I should not have said the A word so soon."

Jaw clenched tight, I focus the few neurons that seemed willing to work on figuring out how poor my physical state is to prevent my mind to rush toward dark memories. For once, my right arm is in a sling, but I can't see much more for my neck won't allow such a degree of rotation. My eyes turn toward the left side of my body for further inspection.

"Sherlock?"

"Hmm?"

"Could you let go of my hand, please?"

"Oh, sure. Harry insisted that one of us always stayed and held your hand in order to give you a sense of reality, like a mental bridge. She's very spiritual for a psychiatrist your sister. Almost mystical I'd say."

"Mystical? Harry?" I almost choke at the thought. One could wonder who is high! "First, she'd need to believe in something else than her own mighty powers. W-wait a sec... you said: o-one of us?"

"Yes. Mrs. Hudson, Harry, Sally, Lestrade, Andersen at some point though he did not hold your hand, it made him uncomfortable, just talked to you to boredom. Harry chased him away, saying that hearing a voice like his would convince anyone to dig one's own grave. I think she was too legal on this if you want my opinion. But you should have seen Andersen's terrified face. Priceless."

"She kicked him out?" I ask, imagining the scene and feeling a guilty joy. Andersen does not deserve being humiliated. For a psychiatrist, I always thought Harry lacked empathy. "She shouldn't have done that..."

"Ah... here we are. The disapproving and bitter younger brother."

"Barely two minutes..."

"And forty seconds. Insignificant and yet crucial to the development of-"

"None of your business, Sherlock."

"Right."

"Where is she?"

"She left ten minutes ago to catch her bus. Want me to run after her?"

"No… no, thank you," I whisper through clenched teeth as pain irradiates through my lower members. "My legs... broken?"

"Right side: double fracture tibia-fibula, three broken ribs, greenstick fracture of your clavicle. Your left side also took some damage, the worse being your torn ankle and wrist. Numerous bruises, a mild concussion. As for your eyes, Pattinson said the operation was a success and the blurriness is only temporary. You should get your twenty-twenty vision back in a couple of months."

"Oh, God... I hate being on pain meds for a long period."

"You're not authorize anything stronger than paracetamol considering your body is still recovering from the mother of all overdose. I must apologize for one of the broken ribs but my concern at the moment was to restart your heart."

"Restart my... Oh. Thanks," say I, overwhelmed by the list of my injuries and the knowledge that I nearly died.

"For how long am I here?"

"Two weeks, five hours, sixteen minutes, and twenty-two seconds," says Mycroft Holmes' cold, clear, sharp voice from the right corner of the room.

"Now that the patient is calm and lucid, enough chit-chat. What do you remember, Doctor Watson?" asks Mycroft as he steps into my field of vision and walks to stand next to Sherlock who stands up, in clear disapproval of his older brother's move. Tension is rising around me faster than the pressure in Miss Hudson's pressure cooker.

"What happened?" I ask, unable this time to keep my mind from rushing back to the never-ending, crumbling tunnels, chasing Allaoui, Allaoui chasing me... the walls reverberating gunshots, bombs... Major Sholvo's voice in the radio encouraging me to keep progressing, to find where the others are being held captives... no! ordering me to retreat... I'm hurt and so exhausted when I find Matthews' and Johnson's bodies tossed in the far left corner of a dark room... wait... they were not there, this is not real. This is an incursion of my last nightmare in my memories.

"You killed a lieutenant coming to your help, John."

I slowly turn wide eyes toward Sherlock. I feel confusion seizing me as violent images assault my mind.

"No... I did not kill Allaoui... I thought I killed him but it wasn't him...in the tunnel..."

"Focus, John. You are not in Afghanistan. You are in London. Try to remember what happened after you left the biosafety level four facility."

"Biosafety... You were suffocating... in your suit... in the lab..."

"What is he talking about?" asks Mycroft when Sherlock's hand springs in the air to silence him.

"I was in the lab, that's right, and you suddenly left. Where did you go?"

"To the staircase giving access to the hospital... Allaoui, I saw a picture of him in Pattinson's office. He was their interpreter. Pattinson, he told me that he was working at the hospital."

"We found the man in question, John. There's no doubt there's a resemblance with Allaoui but he is clear. What happened when-"

"He's not clear, Sherlock!" I brusquely say. Pain shoots through my whole body and I collapse on the bed, panting. "He found me first. He was waiting for me. We fought in the staircase. Tumbled down. I followed him into a parking lot and in a service corridor beneath the facility. That's where... we fought again... there was no winner, Sherlock. Until he came."

"A third man?" asks Mycroft.

"Who came, John?"

"Moriarty... Moriarty shot him and then.. he..."

"What did he do?"

Blinding, excruciating pain...

"I thought he shot me in the head. Did I really kill a man, one of our own?"

An awkward silence spreads until Sherlock says:

"With the intervention of a third party, I have to redo the ballistic."

"I'll see to it," Mycroft says, as the door open.

A nurse brings a bunch of flowers and hands it first to Sherlock before turning toward Mycroft.

"No, I'll do it," Sherlock says, confusing both the nurse and me.

"As you wish, brother of mine," Mycroft says with a deep sigh, taking the flowers and putting them on the table next to the window. "White Lillies, how touching," he adds, picking one up and coming back toward us.

"Even with my poor sight, that's not a Lilli," I say, frowning. "Who brought the flowers?"

"Good question," mutters Sherlock as he takes the flower his brother hands to him.

"What is it?" I ask, unable to decipher the shape.

"A poppy," replies Sherlock as he takes the ten by fifteen centimeters card from his brother's hand and opens it.

A heavy silence installs itself.

"What is it?" I ask again. "Who sends the flowers?"

"After all, you might have retained a glimpse of lucidity during your psychedelic trip," Sherlock says, showing the card to me.

"It's blurred... sorry."

"Do you remember seeing Uccelo's painting of Saint George slaying the dragon?"

"Yeah... vaguely."

"This is the reversed version," says Sherlock.

"There's a capital M on the dragon's left wing."

Silence spreads again, this time broken by Mycroft.

"Well, I guess this explains a lot of the things that happened this month."

"Explain yourself, brother."

"Moriarty has gained access to a critical piece of our defenses through a Trojan horse. Doctor Watson? How many times do you think you submitted yourself to a retinal scan?"

"One to enter at the main gate. Another to enter in the core facility... perhaps another one... I'm not sure."

"You said you thought he had shot you in the head so I guess at that moment, you experienced a blazing pain. Could that blazing pain have been caused by another retina scan?"

I nod. Sure. Any light in my eyes at that time would have hurt badly.

"Three was all he needed," Mycroft says.

"All he needed for what?" asks Sherlock.

"The first to enter the virus in the system, the next to download the files, the last to retrieve them."

"What files did he retrieve?" Sherlock asks, his sharp voice clearly showing how strained his mood had become.

"All the files that matter for our country's defense: the Saint George Protocols."

THE END

The Saint George Protocols


End file.
